


[Not] The End

by tealeaves



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealeaves/pseuds/tealeaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In near-Apocalyptic Los Angeles, they fight and they sacrifice. Dawn's champion is lost and found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Not] The End

A stretch of cloudy sky. Empty streets. Newspapers blown alongside the yellow leaves that would be crisp underfoot, but no one walks. Windows like eyes. 

Echoes of wind in the park. A circle of picnic tables, white and round and polished smooth. But there’s a figure, standing on one of the tables. She’s barefoot and her dress twines around her legs like snakes. Her face is invisible among strands of dark hair whipping about it. Despite that, you can feel it when she smiles.

 

Dawn wakes up with a jolt in a tangle of sheets, her own dark hair spread out over the pillow and wrapped across her throat. She lies in bed, gazing silently at the ceiling, waiting for her heart to slow down to its normal rhythm. When it does, she swings her legs down to the floor and crosses the room, feet dancing lightly over the cold dark wood. At the window, she watches her namesake bleed into the sky.

 

Even forty-five minutes south of Los Angeles, the days are cold and the nights are long. Currents of mystical energy wind around them, toying with the weather. The Watchers talk about being at the mercy of the Fates. Dawn doesn’t believe in fate, she’s taken the scissors from the three crones and weaves her lifeline out of unbreakable strength. Willow comes and goes by ley lines, but it becomes more difficult every day, every hour with the coming darkness, and she grows pale and wan. Xander whittles stakes and his smile is sad. Buffy trains.

There are skirmishes on the border. Sometimes Slayers come back with scratches and bruises. Sometimes their friends carry them back while they’re lost, wandering the depths of their own minds. Sometimes they don’t come back at all. 

Angel and Spike are rarely seen. Sometimes there will be a whirl of dark cloth, a flash of blonde hair. Sometimes, in the far hours of the morning, Dawn can hear them in the basement practice room, sparring, light footsteps like cats. Sometimes they pace the halls like restless ghosts. Dawn longs to curl up in an armchair beside Angel and study the prophecies, to walk the gardens with Spike and watch the smoke from his cigarettes drift into the timeless night. But they hide themselves, her champions.

 

The ground cracks. Rivulets of bottomless darkness appear beneath their feet and the buildings shake. Xander holds her back as she strains and screams. In front of them is the wreck of the Wolfram and Hart building, long abandoned. It stands, a scythe cutting into the horizon, a harbinger in Apocalypse-wracked Los Angeles. She doesn’t notice the way shock and surprise mingles on Angel’s face, the look in Buffy’s eyes as she realizes what it’s like to lose someone for the second time like they’d lost her. 

Spike is inside that building. As Xander pulls her away, the ground collapses, like Sunnydale years before, and the building sinks. Tears among the soot on her cheeks, Dawn goes limp. 

They run.

 

It’s a quiet celebration. There are Slayers that need to be healed and Slayers that need to be put to rest. Downstairs, Giles is on the phone with the Watcher’s Council. He murmurs soft English phrases into the trans-Atlantic lines. 

Dawn sits in the window seat in the third floor hallway, staring out into the sunshine. It’s well into the afternoon, and there are no traces of clouds. She hadn’t slept since they’d gotten back to the house, some hours before daybreak. In her room, she'd huddled on the floor and sobbed, slamming her fists into the rug until her knuckles were red and raw. 

She feels numb. The Apocalypse had been stopped. Spike had sacrificed himself for the second time in less than five years, saved the world, stolen himself away from her. But this time there is no amulet, no talisman to bring back the champion. Pale, hair matted, eyes like glass, she watches the shadows slowly drift across the lawn.

 

A figure walks into her line of vision. She follows its progress with vague disinterest. Blonde hair flashes in the sun. Her heart leaps against her bones, breaking all over again.

She watches as Spike walks across the grass, hesitantly like the earth would break under his feet. He has a shadow. Sitting on a bench, he clasps his hands in his lap and gazes at the sun-bright garden. Dawn can’t see but she thinks there must be wonder in his eyes.

 

She touches his hair. It’s startlingly soft and it curls slightly around her fingertips. His eyes are blue and his cheekbones are sharp. He is Spike and he isn’t. Standing on her tiptoes, she kisses him. It’s like kissing a champion. A hero. A man.

**Author's Note:**

> Found this old drabble (old! really old! like 2005 old!) in a folder and decided to polish it up and post it because I still like it and because there's a dearth of Dawn/Spike fics out there. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this, but there it is.


End file.
